Версия на русском языке ...

In beginning...

            Relations between a person and language can be described in the following way: the person does not possess the language fully – the language possesses the person; the language is not a medium for the person – the person is a medium for the language, since with the help of its structures it creates the person, creates his image in the language which deceptively appears to be a result of the person’s activity. Judging by these reflections, it is possible to declare with a certain share of confidence that the active, creative beginning belongs to language, instead of a person. On the other hand the person is an active being, that is why he constantly changes contours of that structure which is set by language and by which he is a design of a "person”. The obvious perplexity of structures, interdependence, interpenetration does not allow confirming unequivocally which component is the priority-driven active beginning, the main power. This picture shows mutual relations of language and social being, specifies impossibility of dividing language and existential elements; impossibility of considering them separately from one another. A dilemma about what was initial – a hen or an egg, also finds us at the moment of reflections about mutual relations of language and being. It’s hard to speak about priority between language and a person, since in the language of cultural tradition a social figure "person” which, in turn, acts as an interpretant of social is formed, changing meaning of the tradition itself.

            Despite the fact that language is understood by us as the active and creative beginning, it does not produce being or reality, but fulfills their disclosure. Heidegger says that language is "demonstration of being”. Language makes demonstration, disclosure of being, its description in the forms customary for us.

            Since social being is always somehow divided and structured, the new cultural religious tradition provides being to itself within a certain fragment of this being, by making over-dissection of existential section according to its language structure. Imposing language on a part of society, the social agent imposes the structure containing in it and makes over-dissection of being. Actually, nothing changes as a whole, but acquires new semantic coloration. Things of the world do not disappear into nowhere. They take part in the new structures of being organized by over-dissection. This kind of activity is continuous and peculiar to language. Only during a certain moment of time, during capture, it is possible to speak about consistency of existential structures created by language, which, as a matter of fact, is virtual. Capture is continuous – it is a natural and necessary basis for being of language as a functioning tool. "The language captured in its actual essence is something constant and passing during each moment. Even its fixation in writing is always only an imperfect, mummified preservation which anyhow again requires effort on a tangible reconstruction of live pronouncing. The language itself is not a creation (Ergon), but an activity (Energeia). Its true definition can therefore be only genetic. Namely, it is a constantly updated work of spirit directed on making the articulated sound an expression of thought Directly and in strict sense it is a definition of concrete speech [speech as objectification of language of tradition]; but in original and essential sense only the whole of this speech may be considered as language. (9)

            "Language is never simply an expression of thought, feeling and desire. Language is that initial measurement in which a human being altogether proves to be able to respond to being and its call for the first time and to belong to being through this responsiveness. This initial responsiveness, reached in a true sense, is a thought. Through thinking we learn for the first time to dwell in the sphere where delivery of destiny of being, delivery of enframing comes true”. (10)

Besides, the person changes his life environment by means of language. Language has crucial importance in being of the person and entirely owns him as the architect of being. It writes the courses by which a subject travels, sets a way of life, offers places, distributes things, on the whole it structures the world. By its being on a surface of being the language reveals its connection with being. The world structure is a reflection of structure of language.

            I have nothing against a structuralistic approach to language considering it to be the most applicable in this case. Structuralism brings to a thought that language is a tool of thinking. Besides, language can also be understood as the system of signs organized in a certain way. The Bible tells us that the person gave everything its name in order to be in control of the world. The names were voiced by language of God Himself, language of the world. "And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field" Genesis 2:20. The language, being the language of God, the language by which God said creative words – logoses, comprised names of everything that is in the universe. These names had absolute similarity to things which had been named by them. The whole world consisted of the names embodied by the Logoses. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”  Genesis 1:3; "And God said, Let there be a firmament” Genesis 1:6; "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven” Genesis 1:14; "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.” Genesis 1:24

            The Word – Logos in the orthodox tradition is represented as the Creator Himself. In the Gospel of John we can read this: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not”. John 1:1-5. In this part of the Gospel we see how the word comes alive and appears to be an instrument of creation given to the human by God. From the oldest times our ancestors assigned properties to words, ability to materialize. The Orthodox dogmatics unequivocally defines content of ideas of all things of the world before their material being in the Divine mind. In other words: God comprises the whole world, before its appearance and now. And what was destined to be was created by God only with a word – Logos. Before the original sin entered into the world, the essence of each thing was defined by the name. Theophanes the Greek addressed his disciples: "You will behold the essence of any thing if you name it right”.

Reverend Maximus the Confessor’s term Logos is multivalued – it is an idea, a principle, a law of created being, and the goal to which the creature is rushing. Logoses of separate things are contained in the hypostatic Logos, i.e. in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity Which is the foretype and the ultimate goal of all the creation. The whole being is connected with God. Little "logoses” is nothing but energies of the hypostatic Logos. The one Divine Logos is creatively divided into them and through them everything is unified in Him, just as radiuses in the centre of a circle are joined.

If logoses of the created being are ideal foretypes of things and events of the world created by God, the things and events serve as a demonstration, a character, a way of being of the logoses and are called troposes. The Reverend Maximus explains the correspondence between troposes and logoses by the example of painting. The connection between a logos and a tropos is the same as between a person and an image of this person on a portrait. "Although the image is similar and absolutely identical to the foretype, but the essence is different, because … this is the animated being, and that is work of a painter, made of wax and paints”(11)

Thus, according to the teaching of the Reverend Maximus the Confessor, the whole world represents as though a huge icon – realization of the eternal creative plan of the Divine icon painter. In the phenomena of the created world the Divine Logos as though plays with the person, through His Logoses He draws him to perception of God’s great works in the world.

In general, adhering to the orthodox position, the world conceptually is a manuscript of words – logoses of the Other (God). God gave this manuscript to read to the human as to the only child and the disciple for studying the creation. He did it so that the man would follow God’s steps and understand the process of creative work and continued work of the Almighty, and He Himself "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made”. Genesis 2:2-3.

            Coming back to the capture of being by language of cultural tradition, I will underline that language in this process is reduced to an instrumental set of characters [in the form of a cultural and religious fetish] and appears to us as a "enframing”. "The essence of enframing is the concentrated on itself establishment of reality, which sets the truth of its own essence in oblivion and closes off this setting aside by developing in setting of all existing things as being available, constitutes in such enframing and rules in its capacity.

            The enframing in its essence is danger. But does this danger let us recognize it as danger? No. Of course, troubles and asperity everywhere, every hour, press the man immensely. But Danger, i.e. the being itself threatened in true of its essence remains in a shade and under cover. This concealment is the most dangerous in danger, covered with efficiency of enframing”. (10)

Today the question is that attributes of religious tradition included in the language by which this tradition pronounces itself in social being are organized as enframing. This enframing closes off the previous reality with attributes of religious tradition, forcing the agents to cooperate in society by new rules by means of imposing new senses onto previous tradition, imposing them in it by means of its language. The man finds himself in the power of body of traditional language, and in essence in the power of bodies with which the given language operates [icons, temples, symbols, etc.]. The man, being in the same place, irrespective of his will changes the form of a social body due to over-dissection which, in turn, without moving the man in space, changes his semantic co-ordinates. Such metamorphosis is possible because the person voluntarily gives himself in charge of language, responding in this way to change of structure of being under the guidance of enframing. Enframing has to work on its belonging to the language, otherwise its ostensibility will become obvious and the social agent will simply ignore it. Why is belonging to language important? Хайдеггер об этом говорит следующее: Heidegger says the following about it: "Language is that initial measurement in which a human being altogether proves to be able to respond to being and its call for the first time and to belong to being through this responsiveness. This initial responsiveness, reached in a true sense, is a thought. Through thinking we learn for the first time to dwell in the sphere where delivery of destiny of being, delivery of enframing comes true”. (10) In the essence of enframing there is danger as it is. The danger which threatens us with forgetting the essence of being. "The danger is that being in forgetting its essence turns away from this essence and this way it turns against the truth of its essence. In the sphere of danger this turn which is not yet realized rules. Therefore in the essence of danger there is a possibility of such turn is concealed when forgetting of essence of being will turn with such side that when together with this turn the truth of being in its essence will return to the sphere of the real”. (10).

            But what allows enframing to act with such confidence and power? What resources can it have to afford closing-off the reality and to be apprehended instead of reality? Most likely, qualities of enframing seem more comprehensible in the context of being in society and therefore more desired to the individual. Enframing adopts similarity with reality, but has very little in common with it. But similarity is essential. Absence of similarity may rise questions and doubts and, as a result, aversion of enframing. In that enframing becomes a simulacrum.

             G. Deleuze in his work "Plato and the simulacrum” reflects upon the simulacrum, mentioning "marking a difference” between the thing and images, the original and a copy, the model and a simulacrum. He defines the simulacrum as a mirage, as "a false challenger». According to Deleuze: "Plato reveals that a simulacrum is not simply a false copy, but that it questions all images, copies and models in general”. (12) Deleuze finds similarity between a phatasm, a simulacrum and a symbol. Of course, they have some likeness. In my opinion, all three phenomena work and become apparent through one another.

            The simulacrum which was once created to be social found an independent life and now exists irrespective of the rules by which the social develops. Generated by the social, it gained power over the social and writes its laws and rules on its surface "…the simulacrum bursts its bonds and raises to a surface, confirming its suppressed power, the power of phantasm”. (12) Working at formation of the social, the religious tradition operates as a simulacrum which uses the phantasm of the Kingdom of God as the ultimate goal. Being an image of the goal, the phantasm does not cease to be that edge on which a boundary between the real and the ideal, the phantasmatic, to be exact, passes. The simulacrum closes off unreality and artificiality of the phantasm with symbolical components which, having affect on the unconscious a human, raise the Ego, suppressing the mindset of the Super-ego, and define the place in the social space. Occupation of space is accompanied with fore-showing of the space by reference points which the simulacrum exposes by means of language. The language of fore-showing is a language of features in the understanding in which M. Foucault in his book "The Order of Things” ("Les Mots et les choses” in French) offers it to us. In this respect it is necessary to bring into view that an individual should have similarity to a prospective space. He needs identity and matching. Similarity comes to light, becomes obvious due to the features indicating it. The feature is a visible sign of similarity located on a surface of things. "The world of the similar is certainly a world of features”. Paracelsus says: "The will of God is not that everything created by Him for the blessing of man and given to him would stay hidden … And even if He hid certain things, in any case He has left nothing without external visible features with special marks – in the same way as the person who hid a treasure, marks this place so that it could be found”.(13)

            The man, being God’s imitator, creating "his” world makes simulacra which fill the social space with phantasms. In the course of symbolical exchange the phantasm is realized in the field of desire as a necessary, but still phantasmatic reality, charming with its unattainability. Symbols perform as features and lead illusiveness of the desired to possibility of realization. The person starts to aspire to possess similitude of what phantasm defines as a possible place. Deleuze distinguishes two formulas of similitude: "Different is only what is similar” and "only various things may be similar to each other”. "There are two different ways of reading of the world. One urges us to think from the point of view of preliminary similarity or identity while another urges to think of similarity or even identity as a product of a deep incommensurability and discrepancy. The first reading already initially defines the world of copies or representations, it establishes the world as an image. The second reading, contrary to the first one, defines the world of the simulacrum, establishing the world as a phantasm”. (12). Establishment of the world as a phantasm originates from the times of Adam and Eve’s fall. The first people contained the image and likeness of God which separated them from the whole world and defined their place in the universe. "The forbidden fruit” in the Garden of Eden was an incitement to occurrence of a new simulacrum being. Having tasted the forbidden fruit, the first people found death in God and received life in the world doomed for simulacrity. The death of which the Lord warned: "… But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”. Genesis 2:17. As a result of receiving life in the world the simulacrum little by little becomes a concept of the universal life. Eternal return, eternal relaying of the simulacra, repeated stratification of enframings does not give a chance to make out the initial being created by the Creator. Its landscape escapes sight, and in an attempt to define it through removal of closing-off it shows in new consideration. In the words of J.Baudrillard, we have a world map in front of us. Besides, it’s a map created by the simulacrum. The map causing desire to travel for search of treasures which will provide us with possibility of acquiring the admission to a place indicated by the phantasm. The simulacrum turned into the machine of desire. Writing the relief on the human Ego as on a body without organs, it dips its tentacles into the unconscious, causing it to transmit necessity of submission to dictatorship of the simulacrum power.

Symbol is the main means of submission of mentality to the simulacrum. The Church emphasizes the symbolical and uses it in formation of its traditions and practices in the social universe. All attributes of religious language are deeply symbolical: iconography, worship services, temples, church plates for performance of ceremonies and sacraments. Symbolism produces mysticism, and it is a much more perfect tool, although taken by faith. Perception of interpreted symbols is the same aspect though. Besides, the most symbolical tool of human communications is language about which much has been said and the work of which, in the context of religious tradition, I tried to reveal in the above text.